


Unwarranted Dreams

by Aaymeirah



Category: Les Misérables (TV 2018)
Genre: Child Abuse, Child Cosette, Dreams, Eponine and Azelma are inseperable, Gen, Gift Exchange, Gift Fic, Inn at Montefermeil, Irony, Les Misérables BBC Exchange, One Shot, Slice of Life, Tea Parties, The Sergeant of Waterloo, Thénardier children, lesmisbbc, no one there cares about Cosette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-06-02 09:25:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19438585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aaymeirah/pseuds/Aaymeirah
Summary: Cosette just wants love, and maybe a fancy tea party. But who cares about the desires of a tiny, unwanted child? Not Éponine and Azelma, inseparable sisters who really can't be bothered to think about the kid their parents yell at day in and day out.Pardon my French.





	Unwarranted Dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AberrantAngel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AberrantAngel/gifts).



> TW: Neglect, Child abuse; mostly verbal and emotional, attempted sexual abuse is also implied
> 
> The request was for something cute, um...this happened. Enjoy!

The summer breeze blew through the village of Montfermeil. Leaves rustled, and a few villagers made their way from cottages to the small market or the public garden. Éponine clutched her doll to her chest as she looked at the new girl. Long, dirty blond hair hid a dirt-smudged face as she sat hunched over her knees, staring into the distance. 

“I’m Éponine,” she held out a hand to her. The new girl made an aborted move to hold give her hand but ended up tucking it in between her folded legs instead.

“Cosette,” she mumbled. 

“Are you going to play with us?” Azelma cautiously peeked out from behind Éponine’s back. Cosette nodded. 

“You can’t have my doll, but you could go and get water, so we could have a tea party,” Éponine offered. Cosette’s eyes widened. 

“What’s a tea party?”

“It’s what aristos in the big cities do. They sit around and drink tea all dressed up fine. A merchant told me that,” Éponine grinned, remembering. Maman bought Azelma and her their very own dolls. 

“Maman used to sit with me and let me have tea. That must have been a tea party,” Cosette said softly. 

“Why did she leave you here then? If you could have tea parties?” Cosette shrugged, retreating into herself once more. Éponine frowned for she was not used to being denied, over material wants or her curiosity. 

“Can we just have a tea party?” Azelma asked, pulling on a lock of Éponine’s frizzy hair. Éponine swatted her hand away. 

“Go get the water, Cosette. The river is just a little way in the trees,” ordered Éponine, the force of a spoilt girl permeating her words. Cosette nodded quickly and brushed her hair, which was tied back with a ribbon, out of her face. 

“Do- do you have a bucket?” Cosette asked. 

“It’s at the back. Be quick now! You can serve us tea and we’ll be fine ladies.” 

“Alright.” Cosette stood and shuffled hesitantly towards the trees that fringed the inn at which Maman left her. She walked, scuffing her feet, then looked at the road that curved gently upwards, leading out of the village. Cosette could just see the form of her Maman walking away with her head bent, pausing at the rise that would, unbeknownst to mother and daughter, obscure her from Cosette’s view forever. She turned around and waved, Cosette smiled, just a bit, and waved back. Her maman would return soon.  


“Cosette! Hurry with that water!” Éponine yelled. Cosette moved on, and when she turned back to look for one last glimpse of her Maman; she was gone. 

-

Firelight. It did not cast its own shadow, for it was light, but the objects surrounding the smoking fire did. Cosette stared at the dancing flames, their movement hypnotic to her dropping eyes and work-clouded mind. Her stunted imagination began to wander, to a place of hugs and smiles, where brooms didn’t exist and she had a real Maman.  


“Espèce de rate! Bring more bread out. We have hungry patrons and can’t afford you slaking off. Mon Dieu, why did I ever agree to take you off the hands of that putin you call Maman?” Madame Thénardier yelled this across the smoky common room, earning her an appreciative laugh from the patron to whom she was serving absinthe.  


“Oui Madame,” she responded in a small voice, ignoring the harsh words Madame always used as she cast aside the reverie. She propped her straw broom against the fireplace and ran to the kitchen where Cosette piled loves of hard bread mixed with sawdust onto a stained wooden tray. Teetering under the weight, she carefully brought it out to the common room.  


“The best table grenouille! Can’t go around giving out free bread, now can we?” Cosette knew better than to answer, so she made her way over to the ‘best’ table by memory, as her vision was obscured by the small loaves of bread. Once she had served it, Cosette ran back for the cheese, before Madame could order her to do so.  


“Gavroche, I need that cheese,” Cosette said hesitantly when she saw the small, scruffy boy who only nominally lived at the inn stuffing a block of cheese into his pocket. His stomach rumbled audibly. Looking from the cheese to Cosette, he shrugged and broke it in half.  


“Cut off the jagged edge and they’ll never notice a difference,” he advised, before flashing her a smile and disappearing out the back door.  
She stood with the jagged cheese and decided it was better than nothing. The big butchering knife was too heavy for her to pick up, let alone use. So Cosette climbed onto the counter to reach the cupboard with the smaller knives. The one Madame did not know she knew how to access. The one with the objects she wasn’t ever allowed to touch.  
Cutting the cheese and stuffing the excess into her mouth, she then ran out of the kitchen with it on a plate, certain her guilt would be noticed from the small drop of blood which welled up from the pad of her thumb where the knife nicked her.  


“Grubby child,” Madame sniffed and took the plate out of her hands. “Finish sweeping, can’t have the place looking like a pigsty, now can we?” Cosette nodded hurriedly and resumed her eternal task.

-

“Under all that dirt, you could clean up nicely,” a man leaned over to eye Cosette, beard dripping with the foam from his drink. “Come closer little girl.” Cosette did not like his grin. Cosette did not want to come closer. She did the opposite. She ran. Away.

-

“Why did you give her half the cheese?” Éponine cornered Gavroche who finished his half hurriedly, then shrugged.  


“Cosette would be in enough trouble already. I didn’t need it all.”  


“But why would you help her? She’s just a bastard from a dissolute woman,” added Azelma before she was hushed with a glare from Éponine.  


“I’m asking the questions here,” she reminded her younger sister. Gavroche ran his muddy right hand through his puffy hair.  


“I suppose, because, well, she’s sort of like me,” a pause as Gavroche searched for the right word in his limited vocabulary. “Unwanted.” As the sisters digested this, Gavroche slipped beneath their blocking arms and ran off to convince a fellow little one to cause havoc with him.  


“Well, Gavroche is nothing but trouble,” Éponine said eventually, picking at a scab on her elbow as they both stared at the place where that gamin was cornered just moments ago.  


“And so is Cosette. Papa says so all the time,” said Azelma.  


“You repeat everything Papa and Maman say,” retorted Éponine testily.  


“Because they are right. And you see, we don’t cause trouble, so we get all the nice things.”  


“I suppose so,” Éponine moved from picking at the scab to biting her thumbnail in consideration. After a short period of reflection, she decided in her self-serving way that the actions of Gavroche were not her concern and that Cosette’s problems were none of her business.  


“Tag. You’re it!” Éponine put the matter out of her mind once she came to the conclusion so she could fully enjoy slapping Azelma on her arm.  


“Hey! No fair!” Azelma took off after an already running Éponine. Their oblivious laughter soon filled the air. 

“Girls! Calm down,” Monsieur Thénardier’s oily voice called from a window. They paused their game, which had morphed from Tag, to catch the convict.  


“Come inside and help! It’s dinner and that useless Cosette is unavailable,” knowing not to disobey their Papa, they ran inside. Maman bent over to see their stockings.  


“Éponine, what did I tell you about keeping your stocking clean?” Rough hands clasped her face and Maman wiped a smudge of dirt from her cheek.  


"To keep them clean for a lady should never have dirty stockings." 

“That's it! Now, add them to the wash, Cosette will clean them once she can function again. The little slacker.” Madame Thénardier switched from conciliatory to disdainful in a heartbeat.  


“Girls, you must help out today, we are unusually busy. There is money to be made and no matter how pretty my two girls are,” Papa paused to pinch them each on the cheek, “the coins won’t enter my pockets themselves.” Azelma nodded at once, Éponine following suite a moment later.  


“But why do we need to help? What happened to Cosette?” she asked.  


“The ungrateful brat tried to run away and slipped into the river. We tried to get her up, but she’s just shivering and unresponsive. I knew it was a mistake when that woman left her here.” Maman said this as she moved away, the moment of outward familial fellowship broken. Papa’s face lit up.  


“This means that I can ask Fountain or whatever her name is for more money! To treat Cosette and all!” Papa spoke this out loud to no one in particular, then continued, “go help your maman, I have a letter to write.” As he walked away, Éponine could practically hear him marveling at the novel fact that a letter asking for more money would for once be true.

-

“Éponine?” Cosette’s small, shaky voice stopped her in her tracks. Éponine was tired, and only wanted her bed.  


“What?”  


“Do you think I’ll ever attend at a real tea party?”  


“Huh?” Éponine wondered what had prompted this. Cosette hardly spoke, let alone asked questions.  


“A tea party. Like the one we had when I first came. Where you and Azelma let me play with too.”  


“Oh. Well then, no. You’re nothing really. What makes you think you’d ever be in a position to sit around all fancy and just drink tea?”  


“It’s one of my dreams.”  


“Dreams mean nothing Cosette,” said Éponine forcefully as she turned and walked away to the room and bed she shared with Azelma. Let Cosette nurse her false fever dreamed hopes by herself, she wanted no part in it. 

-

Try as she might, Éponine could not bring herself to fall asleep.  


“Stop kicking me, and leave me some of the blankets,” she hissed in the darkness, looking at the indistinct outline of Azelma, curled into a fetal position. Inarticulate noises came from the lump that was her sister. Éponine huffed and yanked her fair share of the blankets over her own cold body.  


“Stop it,” muttered Azelma.  


“Give me the blankets," countered Éponine.  


“Fine,” she was awake now too. They lay together in silence.  


“Say, what do you think would happen if Cosette were to die from her fever?” Éponine asked.  


“No one would miss her, just her help,” Azelma answered.  


"But like, with the body and stuff."

“Maman and Papa would think of something. They always do. Besides, it wouldn’t affect us, so why would we care?”  


“I suppose so,” Éponine agreed, wishing she could have the same confidence in their parents.  


“You know, Cosette asked me if I thought she’d ever get a real tea party as we played a few months ago.” Azelma propped her head on her hand to stare at her sister.  


“She’s a grubby nobody. If anyone would get a tea party, it’d be us, when Maman and Papa become rich.”  


“You trust them so much.”  


“Don’t you?” Azelma stared, wide-eyed at her sister.  


“I don’t trust anybody,” Éponine sniffed haughtily.  


“You don’t trust me?” Azelma asked quietly. Éponine looked at her searchingly, a small smile on her face.  


“Alright, I trust one person.”  


“Me?”  


“Yes, of course, you. Silly. We’re sisters. We’ll stick together.”  


“And when we’re rich we’ll have a tea party and four new dresses every year!”  


“Of course. Bonne nuit, sœur.” Éponine said softly, brushing curly hair out of Azelma’s eyes. Azelma yawned and turned over, an action Éponine herself copied. Soon, she was asleep, dreams and worries, considerations and issues cast aside for the nonsensical dreams of her subconscious and the comforting presence of her sister at her side.


End file.
